Désir de femme

This could have been a good film if only Bo Derek's acting was as fantastic as her body. Like any erotic thriller, there is a mystery to be solved: in this case Christina Ford (Bo Derek) accuses captain Jack (Jeff Fahey) of killing her husband and raping her. This is further complicated when it emerges that the husband has a twin brother (both roles played by Steven Bauer). The question becomes, who really went overboard on that fateful night? This is the question that the lawyer played by an almost sleepwalking Robert Mitchum must answer. The film reaches its resolution in a muddled way and it comes from an unexpected quarter.

It is a pity that Bo Derek cannot show any sort of acting ability. Her face barely changes at any time during the film, always showing a sort of half-smile all the time despite the crimes that have supposedly been committed against her. She does get to show off her body though at several points in the film, especially in the motorcycle scene, but director Robert Ginty could have done better, after all Miss Derek is not shy when performing these scenes. Never mind though, Miss Derek does compensate for a mediocre film.

I have seen a few versions of this film, VHS and DVD; the Hong Kong DVD has Miss Derek's pubic area blurred; and the Dutch DVD has most of the nudity and sex scenes deleted but adding some extra dialogue between Christina and Jack.

Woman of Desire (1993)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

After the success of BASIC INSTINCT erotic-thrillers were turning up every few weeks. They ranged from some good knock-offs to downright horrid pieces of trash. This one here is a pretty bad movie but there are enough campy moments and the cast is attractive enough to make it hard to turn off. Captain Jack Lynch (Jeff Fahey) washes on shore saying that his boss (Steven Bauer) fell overboard during a storm. The boss has a wife (Bo Derek) who claims that Jack shot her husband and then raped her but Jack claims he's innocent and had been carrying on an affair with the wife. If you're looking for an actual plot your not going to find much of one here as there are enough plot holes here that one will question if a few first-graders didn't right this thing. As is to be expected, Derek plays the beautiful blonde who might not be a very good person as she is constantly sleeping with various men and she might have a few reasons as to why she'd want to see her husband dead. It will come as no shock that Derek doesn't give that much of a performance but she certainly looks extremely good here at the age of 37. She's clearly not here for her acting but for her sex appeal and she has quite a bit of that. She has quite a few nude scenes and there's no denying that she looks wonderful and this is the main reason people are going to be checking this out and have been checking it out since it's constant plays on Cinemax throughout the late-night hours. Fahey has always been a favorite of mine and his presence here gave the film some added value even though he's not overly good either. The big shock is that Robert Mitchum plays his lawyer here and actually gets a lot of screen time. This here certainly isn't a classic performance but it was fun seeing him in this type of role and he clearly gives the best performance of the bunch. It's pretty hard to take the film serious because there are just so many bad things. The direction is pretty poor, the music is horrid and even the editing looks very cheap. The dialogue is extremely bad and the courtroom scenes are rather embarrassing. With that said, with Derek looking as great as she does and the other campy values, if you're a fan of bad movies then this one here is worth watching.

Apart from "10", the career of actress Bo Derek is essentially one terrible film after another...most of which seem to include her taking off her clothes. Among her infamous appearances, along with their current IMDB scores, are "Tarzan the Ape Man" (3.4), "Bolero" (3.0), "Ghosts Can't Do It" (2.2), "The Master of Disguise" (3.4), "Boom" (2.3), "Sunstorm" (3.5) and "Orca" (5.8). While possibly not the worst actress of all time, she certainly is in the running. Now the odd thing about all this is that in several films, very well respected actors appeared in these films...such as Anthony Quinn in "Ghosts Can't Do It", George Kennedy in "Bolero" and "Woman of Desire" with Robert Mitchum.

The story begins with a twist. There's a nude person lying on the beach (no surprise) but it's NOT Bo ( a BIG surprise). It happens to be the captain of a yacht who claims he was washed overboard. However, he's shocked to hear that the woman aboard the boat, Christina (Derek), claims he raped her and murdered her husband. The film is about the investigation and court hearing to determine exactly what really happened.

As I mention in the summary, Robert Mitchum is one of the stars in this film. Now considering how well respected an actor he was AND how bad Derek's reputation was, you wonder why he wanted to make the film in the first place. I can only assume it was all about the money. Thank goodness for small favors that at least he keeps his clothes on during the film considering he was 76 in 1994.

So, despite a lot of very gratuitous nudity, is this film watchable? Note that I am not saying is it good but is it watchable. Well, not really. While this film is supposed to be about rape and murder, throughout the course of the film you keep seeing flashback after flashback with Bo getting naked! It really cheapens the notion of rape...almost making it seem sexy...which is just disgusting. And, the acting and writing in between is not especially good. Frankly, why not just make a porno film and skip all the stupid dialog and plot? So what this means is that if you want a good story, look elsewhere. And, if you want good porn, you can probably find a lot better and a bit more explicit on the internet.

By the way, despite this being a bad film, Mitchum, despite badly choosing to be in the movie, is pretty good.

This was a pretty sad piece of work. All it is is another vehicle for Bb Drek to show off her tremendous body (and face). The acting is terrible in here and the story is muddled. Frankly, it's not much more than a soft-porn flick.

What's disappointing is an actor of Robert Mitchum's status to stoop to this level. Yeah, and he acted poorly, too. If I didn't know it was him, I would have thought it was some amateur thespian. He, and the guy who played the police chief, sounded like they were just reading their lines. Jeff Fahey is the only actor who sounds like he knows (or cares) what he's doing.

Derek is nice to ogle in her steamy scenes but this is a horrible movie.

Underrated adventure thriller with an interesting cast, wonderful scenery, and good story. Most of the interest for this film will ultimately be to Bo Derek fans. If nothing else, Bo is always watchable. In her films, she never has quote-unquote "nude scenes" so much as she has scenes where she is nude. If you have abandoned Bo since her breakout film "10" perhaps you will revisit some of her post "Bolero" and "Tarzan" works. Bo Derek looks like she had a lot of fun making this particular film and is fun to watch. She is just as gorgeous as she was in "10" and twice as confident.